How could he be angry? “No. What do you want to do now?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Nev. Gain back some of this weight, first of all. I just don’t know, I’m so tired.”
“Go to sleep.”
“Will you come and see me tomorrow?”
He felt a flash of irritation and resentment at the request-Penelope would be hurt and angry again, and he had so much to do already-and then guilt at his own selfishness. “If I can. Of course.”
“I’d like that. Stay with me till I’m sleeping, won’t you?”
He nodded.
When she was asleep, he went out into the other room. Penelope sat at the table in earnest conversation with Mrs. Bailey. She looked up at Nev, her face grave. “I think perhaps we ought to find another place for Miss Raeburn.”
“Certainly, if it’s too much trouble for Mrs. Bailey,” Nev said, puzzled.
Mrs. Bailey gave him a pleading look. “That ain’t it, your lordship. Everyone hates us now on account of Jack peaching. And Sir Jasper’s been to visit her, and that doesn’t help none. People have been-a rock came through the window in there and almost hit Miss Raeburn on the head, this morning.”
Nev rocked back on his heels. “Oh. Well, then. Certainly. And-I’ll find someone to guard the house. The children ought to be safe.”
Penelope was unsurprised when she woke up the next morning with her stomach in knots. She barely made it to the basin in her dressing room before casting up her accounts. Thank God Nev hadn’t slept in her bed last night.
Her stomach rolled again. He hadn’t touched her, not after talking to Miss Wray. It was too much, all of it-the poachers and Edward and Miss Wray. She wasn’t strong enough. She had never been strong enough, not at school and not now. She was a weak, silly, nervous girl and she felt like crying.
She wiped her mouth and looked at the Hogarth engravings. Edward’s anger didn’t trouble her anymore, and yet the sharpest sting of the engravings remained: the unequal marriage that ended in disaster. Had Hogarth and Edward and Lady Bedlow been right after all?
Miss Wray had been moved to Agnes Cusher’s house. Penelope brought them some soft white bread, soft enough for Miss Wray.
“Thank you, my lady.” Agnes’s face was closed and lined. She took the basket and didn’t move from the doorway.
“I’d like to talk to Miss Raeburn. I’m writing to my parents, and I thought she might want to include a message for her mother.” It was the truth; Mrs. Brown had asked Penelope to do it. But Penelope wasn’t entirely sorry. She was perversely curious, she admitted to herself. She wanted to see what kind of a woman Nev had chosen when he was choosing for himself.
“That’s very kind of you,” Agnes said, in a voice that said she wasn’t impressed, and moved aside.
Miss Wray lay on a cot in the corner of the room. She looked at Penelope with interest, fighting for breath as she tried to sit up. Agnes was at her side in a moment, arranging pillows behind her with gentle hands.
“Thank you, Agnes.” Miss Wray smiled, and Agnes smiled back, with a malicious glance at Penelope to see how she took it.
Penelope raised her chin. So. Agnes knew this was Nev’s mistress and had taken to her out of spite against Penelope. It didn’t matter. It couldn’t hurt her.
If only Penelope believed that.
“I’m going to fetch water. I’ll be back in a few minutes. Come along, Kit.” And Agnes bustled them out the door as if she couldn’t wait to get away from Penelope.
“Lady Bedlow,” Miss Wray said with some constraint. “Allow me to thank you for-”
“Oh, don’t.” Penelope felt as if she were choking. “It was no hardship, and your mother has worked for my father for so long, and-” She did not know how to break through the polite lies, so she was grateful when Miss Wray did it for her.
“Nev says-” She twisted a golden curl round her finger in a nervous gesture that Penelope could see would be bewitchingly flirtatious when she was a stone heavier and clean and well-dressed. “Nev says you know how things used to be between us. So thanks for not tossing me out or having me quietly poisoned or anything.”
Penelope was surprised into a laugh. “I-it bothers me. But Nev’s been so worried about you and felt so guilty. I wanted you to get well.”
“He oughtn’t to feel guilty. It wasn’t his fault, none of it.”
Penelope could not bring herself to say the obvious, that it had been his child. “He thinks-he thinks you must have wanted for money, to go without proper care. And that he could have helped you, in that way at least.”
“I didn’t want for money,” Amy said wryly, “only sense. My mum didn’t know where the money was, that’s all. And I didn’t tell any of my friends I was in trouble because I felt so stupid. Then I knew it hadn’t gone right, and I was bleeding too much and getting sick. But I was so miserable and angry with myself I just soldiered on, and then it was too late.”
Penelope listened to this speech with a growing and uncomfortable sense of recognition. “I’ve done that. When I was fourteen, I decided to run away from school and tried to climb the fence. But I fell and broke a tooth, and I was too ashamed to tell anyone. I went on like that for weeks until I could barely eat, and one of the teachers noticed my face was red and swollen. I’ve never seen my mother so angry.”
Miss Wray plucked at the blanket. “My mum must be out of her head with worry. You will tell her I’m all right, won’t you?”
“Of course I will. I-listen, I know we’re supposed to be at each other’s throats, hissing like spiteful cats, but none of this is your fault. I don’t see why we can’t be friendly.”
Miss Wray smiled at her, a charming smile that dimpled her cheeks, and Penelope thought of several reasons; but she tamped them down.
“I don’t see why either, though I never expected to be friendly with one of my gentlemen’s wives. But you seem nice enough, and there’s no reason practical girls like us can’t get along.” Miss Wray made a moue, her voice turning a little bitter at the end.
Penelope couldn’t help it, the instinctive recoil at being told by an actress that they were two of a kind, and yet she felt abruptly that they were. They were both London girls who wanted to be something they were not, something glamorous and genteel; they were both girls Nev did not love.
“It gets tiresome being practical, doesn’t it?” Penelope said. “You just want to do something stupid, like smash the china, even though you’d feel foolish the next moment, and it wouldn’t help. You know it wouldn’t make you happy but you can’t help wondering if it-would make you different, somehow.”
Miss Wray nodded ruefully. “They want someone who will give them thrills, and I only know how to make them comfortable. We just aren’t the sort men fall in love with.”
Penelope knew that was true, had always known it; but she thought of Edward. “I don’t know-”
Miss Wray’s eyes brightened. “So there is someone? That old friend Nev was so jealous of?”
“We were engaged, before,” Penelope confessed.
“Is it Ed Macaulay? My mum always said the two of you would make a match of it for sure. Half the girls in the plant were green with envy.”
Penelope was startled for a moment. But of course the Raeburns would have known Edward. “Yes.”
“You gave him up for a title, and you’re sorry.”
“I-it wasn’t the title. I gave him up for Nev, because Nev needed me and he was so-” She searched for the word that would describe Nev and why she had wanted him, and could not find it.
“Nev has a way about him, doesn’t he?” Miss Wray asked wistfully. “He gave me money when we split up, you know. He told me he knew it would be more useful than a pretty diamond bracelet, and he was right-but from him I would rather have had the bracelet.”